South Africa: it's my home country. I was born there 24 years and 4 months ago. I haven't spent massive amounts of time there (only a total of 2 years and 10 months of living and around 4 months of vacation time there), yet I feel a deep sense that South Africa is my home. To a large extent that is because SA is where my roots are. As I said above, I was born there. It's also because I just flat out love it! South Africa has so much good going for it. Firstly, it's a beautiful place! South Africa's natural environment is so diverse, filled with a wide variety of landscapes. There are vast amounts of coastline both on the east and west sides of the country. There are huge mountains that dot the landscape inland from the ocean. There's a large desert in northwest South Africa. There are numerous game parks spread throughout the country with countless varieties and species of Africa's great animals. Secondly, South Africa has very diverse people groups. There are 11 official languages in the country and four distinct races in South Africa: black, white, indian, and colored (not a racist term, it's an actual race there). Thirdly, South Africa is a sports crazy nation. My favorite sport there is rugby, and man do we breed rugby players well! We've won two rugby world cups, and more will surely follow. Other key sports in the country are football, cricket, field hockey, surfing, golf, etc. In school, students are almost required to play a sport, and each grade level has on average five teams for the main sports. Lastly, I love South Africa because of the food! South Africa is home to as much diverse food as it has people groups and more! When I was there I surely gained at least five pounds feasting on all the good things South African cuisine has to offer. I ate massive amounts of meat at braais (Afrikaans for grill, thus BBQs) for three consecutive days and at least another two days non-consecutively. Are you starting to get the picture? Wanna visit sometime? You should!
Yet with all that there is to love about South Africa, one massive, dark cloud still hangs over the landscape of a country supposedly 17+ years on from Apartheid. I saw it vividly during my two and a half weeks there on vacation recently. The racism of South Africa is the key element to that dark cloud. Within the first 24 hours of my time in South Africa I saw its affects and heard its brutality. People asked me numerous times, "How are the blacks in Kenya, they aren't like our's are they?" "Surely they're better," they were thinking. It was during these moments that my heart broke. Driving through South Africa I'd go from affluence to incredible poverty in a flash. Most of the racial dividing lines set up by the Apartheid government during their oppressive reign at the helm of South Africa still stand today. Not because the people don't want to move out of their ghettos, but because there is no way to be able to do so. They simply cannot afford it. I realize that some have moved out, and some are doing quite well for themselves. But the vast majority of people have not left the now invisible barricades once enforced through papers and police people who kept them inside of particular sections of metropolitan areas.
It's at times like the moments I spent back in South Africa that I had to ask how does God view this place? What difference should his kingdom make in this landscape? This is where the road must feel the rubber running all over the top of it. This collision of rubber meeting the road has to happen every day. It's when words are turned into action. When the followers of Christ stand up and speak up for the oppressed of South Africa.
South Africa sort of has a minimum wage. But, millions work for less than that because there simply are not enough jobs at minimum wage to discover. And it's true. These jobs bellow minimum wage are needed, and people are thankful to at least be making something. It is this something that will provide food and some kind of sustenance to survive. But I have to ask, would I ever work for that? Would people of my skin color ever work for that? Most certainly not. I would never in my life work for less than $1.50 a day. Never would I work for less than 20 U.S. cents an hour. Yet, this is what is happening. Could it be that the people deemed lazy simply don't have the energy and motivation to work for piddle sticks? $10.50 a week. Would you work hard for that when you're used to a minimum wage of many times that a week? The honest answer is of course I would not, and definitely most of you wealthily enough to be reading this on a computer would not. Why? Because there is a heavenly kingdom that has come to earth that says this inequality has got to stop.
Please don't think I'm only bashing the fair skinned people here. I'm not. I know there is a government of empty promises in power. This is a government that promised the impoverished of South Africa hope. They promised a better future. They promised jobs that not only allowed people to live, but allowed them to enjoy life. Sadly, it's not happening. At least not on the grander scale. Many of those promise givers are living the glorious life, but at the expense of the people they made promises to. I'm not necessarily agreeing with suspended ANC party member Julius Malema who says that he wants to see white domestic workers in South Africa in 10 years. What I am saying is there needs to be true equality. Not only on paper but in reality.
So what is the solution? That's tough to answer. But I think it starts when people truly begin to think about the fact that there is now neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. In other words there is now neither white nor black, indian nor colored, Sandtonian nor Sowetoan. There are no longer dividing lines, we are ONE in Christ. This week I read Ephesians 2:11-22 with new eyes. I hope you can too:
Don’t take post Apartheid South Africa with a grain of salt. It seems like only yesterday that blacks, indians, coloureds, etc., had no idea what it was like to live like the whites. You hadn’t the faintest idea. You knew nothing of what it meant to be the chosen ones. Had no idea what it meant to go to a nice school, or drive a nice car, or work a decent job. But now, because of Mandela and the struggle of some fine men, some of which died for your freedom, you who were once out of it have now been given a chance.
Things have been made better between us, and apparently there is supposed to be equality. Both whites and darker skinned people are now one. The walls of hostility and segregation have now been demolished and we are supposed to be living in the same neighborhoods. The constitution has been rewritten, so that those laws which hurt us more than helped us have been erased. And we have now started over. We live in a democracy. Instead of continuing to live in our own places, separated by hundreds of years of aggression and hate, there is now a new creation, a new nation, a rainbow nation.
Democracy was supposed to bring us together. We were supposed to shake hands and hug our neighbors. The hostility was supposed to be over. There was supposed to be peace and equality. Through peace we are supposed to have equal access to quality education and well paying jobs.
That’s pretty simple right? We’re no longer supposed to be separated, looking for a better future. The bright future is now here. We’re no longer enemies, people living in different suburbs, neighborhoods, shanty towns, slums, villages, etc. We have a new country, and we all have access to it, irrespective of skin color. Let’s build a new nation, where everyone has a place, and an equal place at that. There is one thing that holds us together, and that is that we’re all created in the same image of God.
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I realize that I'm asking for something that is way beyond reality. But, you have to remember, the kingdom of God is something which is way beyond reality as well.
